"His wife told us that he slept with a bomb strapped to his chest so that he would not be taken alive. But he did not fire a single shot - many people might have loved him in death. He needed to die."

Saddam had come home to his birthplace. Nearby farmers were ordered to stay indoors and when two men with AK-47s rushed from the suspect hut and were captured, Saddam Hussein was utterly alone - hidden in a hole in a crude basement dug into the sandy earth beneath the hut.

Claiming a critical breakthrough about 10 days earlier, he said that, working on the assumption that if Tikrit was Saddam's home area, the former leader was likely to be relying on family and tribal links. "As we continued to conduct raids and capture people, we got more and more information on the families that were somewhat close to Saddam Hussein."

Reuters quoted an unnamed official as saying: "In recent days they picked up a person who in interrogation gave them new sites, which led them to new information that led them to new people, which led them to new sites, which led them to the site they went to last night where they thought that Saddam and or one of his top enablers would be, and it turns out he was."

The first men into the hut - an untidy farmer's shack with a bare mattress on the floor and one tap with cold water - found tell-tale signs that they were in the right place: on the mattress was a bundle of new T-shirts and socks and an old suitcase with $US750,000 ($A1 million) in $100 notes. Hardly the possessions of an Iraqi farmer.
After all the bombast, all the bluster about fighting like a lion, he surrendered like a frightened kitten. Saddam the tramp was George Bush's prisoner.
mred - if i fouind a suitcase with 750k in a shack, im not sure id refer to t-shirts as being a telltale sign

Saddam had insisted, they said, that the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the northern Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, in which an estimated 5000 people were killed, was the work of Iran.

The Americans believe that Saddam was constantly on the move between about 20 of what they called "spider holes" in the Tikrit area, sometimes staying in the one place for as little as a few hours.
mred - have they been to check the other 20 spideyholes? what mite they find there?

If those who opposed the "coalition of the willing" (the US, Britain, Australia and Poland) had won the political debate, Saddam would have triumphed. He would now be presiding over a regime that murders its own people, threatens its neighbours and had prevailed over the US and Britain.
mr ed - like gwb?

Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Mark Latham both supported the imposition of the death penalty on the fallen Iraqi leader, with Mr Howard calling for a public trial to indelibly remind the world of "what a brutal, cruel man he has been".
mr ed: on what legal grounds? australia doesnt have a death penalty. does iraq have a constitution?

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has undergone surgery for prostate cancer, the State Department has said.
"Secretary Powell is undergoing surgery this morning for prostate cancer," spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement overnight. "The operation is being performed at Walter Reed army medical centre in Washington.
"He will be there for several days before he returns home.
It was not immediately clear when the diagnosis of prostate cancer was made.
State Department officials, including Powell's top aides, only learned of it at yesterday morning's staff meeting.
mred-curious that this happens when sh was captured. of course, rummy and gwb and condi get their falkingheads on the teeve.